"Our Voices Will Be Heard" is the first play written, directed and performed by Native Americans to be performed on the main stage in Perseverance Theatre history.
"Voices," the first play by Anchorage author Vera Starbard, is not the kind of entertainment many people expect when they go to the theater or turn on the television. But it is engrossing.
At the beginning of the play, we are in a Tlingit clan house in the 1800s. The propriety-minded matriarch of the clan, Shanaa (Jane Lind), is happily celebrating the naming of her two new grandchildren by her daughters, gentle and complacent Wanadoo (Leeta Gray) and lively, bossy Litaa (Erika Stone). The scene is long and conversational, but one immediately senses a Shakespearean set-up.
The action immediately jumps forward several years. The babies Kutaan (Erin Tripp) and Sagu (Xoodzi) are now in their teens, affectionate toward each other but each hiding the turmoil caused by being sexually abused by their uncle Jinahaa (Dylan Carusona). But the play is not about sexual abuse per se. Rather, it's about what happens to the family when abuse is revealed.